The Yogscast

Yogscast Ltd.

Type	Limited
Industry	Entertainment, Gaming
Founded	2008
Founder(s)	Lewis Brindley Simon Lane
Headquarters	Bristol, United Kingdom
Key people	Lewis Alan Brindley (Co-founder, Shareholder & Company Director) Simon Charles Lane (Co-founder, Shareholder & Company Director) Mark Turpin (CEO & Business Development Manager) Rich Keith[1] (General Manager)
Website	http://www.yogscast.com/

The Yogscast are a group of YouTube broadcasters who produce gaming-related video content, focused around their main YouTube channel, YOGSCAST Lewis & Simon, with additional content syndicated through a wider network of YouTube channels. The channel initially gained popularity with its videos about the MMO World of Warcraft,^[2] though videos about the sandbox game Minecraft brought it to widespread attention.^[3][4]

In June 2012, the Yogscast's primary channel, YOGSCAST Lewis & Simon, (then BlueXephos) became the first channel in the United Kingdom to reach one billion views.^[5] As of March 2013, it is the most viewed and second-most subscribed YouTube channel in the UK,^[6] with over six million subscribers^[7] and over three million daily views.^[8] The Yogscast received the "Greatest YouTube Gamer Award" at the Golden Joystick Awards in 2012 and 2013.^[9]

Origins

The group was founded in July 2008 by Simon Lane and Lewis Brindley. The name "The Yogscast" was derived from the title letters of a previous World of Warcraft guild named "Ye Olde Goone Squade".^[10] "Goons" are members of the Something Awful forums where the guild was originally formed and which most of the Yogscast members are part of. Videos posted on behalf of the guild were referred to as "YOGScasts", with the term "Yogscast" eventually coming to refer specifically to those posted by videographer Brindley.^[11]

Video series

Principal members of the Yogscast at BlizzCon 2011. From left to right, Hannah "Lomadia" Rutherford, Lewis "Xephos" Brindley, and Simon "Honeydew" Lane.

World of Warcraft

The World of Warcraft videos were the first videos released by the Yogscast. These videos were largely how to videos and parodies of how to videos. When the Cataclysm expansion set was released Brindley and Lane began recording play-through videos. Much of the Yogscast's initial popularity was due to media and blog coverage of these videos.^[2] Joystiq regularly covered Yogscast Warcraft videos as they were released.^[12]

Minecraft

One of the most popular video features of the Yogscast is the Minecraft series.^[3] In December 2010, Brindley and Lane began an ongoing series of Let's Play-style Minecraft survival multiplayer videos. As the series progressed, however, it evolved into a semi-improvised comedy drama and was renamed Shadow Of Israphel. The Yogscast then expanded to produce video coverage of Minecraft updates, and shorter series consisting of Brindley and Lane playing through custom "challenge" and "adventure" maps designed by members of the Minecraft fan community. Yogscast members Hannah Rutherford and Duncan Jones also make occasional appearances with Brindley and Lane to demonstrate Minecraft mods.

At Gamescom 2011 the Yogscast promoted the Xperia PLAY with Minecraft: Pocket Edition on behalf of Markus "Notch" Persson, creator of Minecraft, who was unable to attend in person.^[13]

Minecraft mod packs

Tekkit & YogCraft artworks

In June 2012, the Yogscast started a new Minecraft server running the mod pack Tekkit. Many Yogscast members took the chance to make Tekkit series after the instant success of the initial series. They later changed the series name as a whole to 'Jaffa Factory' because of changes to the mod pack, as explained in the video "Jaffa Factory 93 – Everything is broken".^[14] The series was based on Lane's aspiration of making Jaffa Cakes (represented by cookies) in Minecraft. Brindley sought the help of Jones, who had a very basic understanding of the mod pack previous to the series.^[15] Later on in the series, the Yogscast based some episodes on very basic, streamline 'scripting', and introduced Yogscast members Sips and Sjin.^[16] They played part of being hostile at first against the 'Honeydew' gang, but soon after major events in the series they all ganged up in the one series on BlueXephos. In March 2013, all the previous Tekkit series restarted with different names; for example, the Yogscast restarted their Tekkit series as 'The Jaffa Factory' with episode 93.^[14]

The Yogscast later created a custom version of the Minecraft mod pack Feed The Beast that they started using for their series and later made available on the FTB Launcher. This mod pack was named "YogCraft".

On 21 July 2013 FTB Founder and creator "Slowpoke" announced changes to custom Feed The Beast modpacks, stating that YogCraft was locked and that there were no plans for an update to this pack, as "Yogscast tend to stay with the same modpack for quite a while".^[17]

Minecraft music parodies

The Yogscast have also made several music parodies about Minecraft. As of November 2012, their most popular video is 'Screw The Nether', based on Maroon 5's 'Moves Like Jagger'. Another popular parody is 'Form This Way' based on Lady GaGa's 'Born This Way'. Both are created and sung mainly by Yogscast member Martyn Littlewood. Another popular music parody is 'HONEYDEWYEAYEA', a parody of the viral video 'HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA'. Released in June 2013, 'HONEYDEWYEAYEA' gained two million views in just under two days.^[18] This parody was released around the time that the BlueXephos channel reached a total of two billion YouTube views. Brindley commented: 'Consider this a special celebration for reaching 2 billion views, you guys are the best.'^{[citation needed]} Lyrics and singing were by Lane with extra vocals from Brindley, Lovasz, Jones, Littlewood and Sparkles*. A 'HONEYDEWYEAYEA 10 hour version' was also released two days after the original, with a behind the scenes version released later on.^[19]

In October 2013, How Do I Craft This Again? was released by the Yogscast.

Garry's Mod

The Yogscast also have a series in the sandbox physics game Garry's Mod in which they look at some fun and amazing things that users have created, and released to the public, on the game.

Secondary channel and sub-network

The Yogscast has a secondary gaming channel originally called Yogscast2 and now known as Yogscast Hannah.^[20] This channel originally featured "YogTrailers", a series in which Brindley and Lane provided commentary while watching videogame trailers, but subsequently exclusively showed "Hannah Plays", a series in which Rutherford plays through various games such as Alan Wake, L.A. Noire, Batman: Arkham City, The Walking Dead, Mass Effect 3, Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Red Dead Redemption, Tekkit, Far Cry 3 and various indie games.

In December 2011, the Yogscast started a sub-network within Polaris (formerly known as TheGameStation, and itself a sub-network of Maker Studios) presenting four new channels featuring members of the Yogscast and the YOGS guild: YogscastSips, YogscastSjin, YogscastLalna and YogscastRythian. In the summer of 2012 two extant channels, NilesyRocks and inthelittlewood, joined the Yogscast family, followed by the creation of two more channels: ZoeyProasheck and TheStrippin. In 2013, the extant channels HybridPanda, Ridgedog, DaveChaos, Hatfilms and Adamzonetopmarks became another part of the Yogscast. TeeYogscast, YogscastKim, ParvPlays and YogscastZylus have also been created, bringing the running total of Yog channels up to 18. In June 2013, the naming format for all channels was changed to YOGSCAST followed by the name of the featured people, for example – BlueXephos became YOGSCAST Lewis and Simon, InTheLittlewood became YOGSCAST Martyn and yogscastlalna became YOGSCAST Duncan.

The YouTube channel of the band Area 11, who are licensed under Yogscast Studios, are also associated but don't use the Yogscast-branded avatars used by the other channels. The channel Ridgedog featuring gamer Steven Goates has recently referred to itself as YogscastRidge due to Goates' active involvement in the Yogscast as major admin support and constant support throughout their successful series.

As of December 2013, the network has more than 16 million subscribers in total.^[7]

YoGPoD podcast

The YoGPoD podcast was first released on 5 February 2009, and was intended to run alongside the group's YouTube video releases. The podcast often featured members of Brindley and Lane's World of Warcraft guild. Featured members included Lovasz, Jones, Hellstrand, Rutherford, Vyrianne, Yohi, Ravs, Pierson and Drahl. They were released regularly at first with a proposed weekly schedule, but their releases became more sporadic over time to the point where their podcast "Episode 42: Strawnana" came 5 months after its predecessor. A new YoGPoD was released on the 30th of October celebrating Halloween, the first YoGPoD in 12 months.

The YoGPoD's content was varied, but one of the most prominent features was Lane impersonating public figures, and Brindley interviewing them. Brian Blessed and Warwick Davis were the most prominent "interviewees". An actual video interview with Davis took place in November 2012. A major meme is Tina Barrett, who is mentioned often and listeners are told to post on her Myspace page.

Since 20 March 2011 animations of segments from the YoGPoD have been featured on the Yogscast's main video channel BlueXephos. These animations have featured the work of several artists, most notably Swedish animator Fredrik Malmhake.

The YoGPoD reached #1 on the iTunes UK Podcasts chart on 4 July 2012^[21] following the release of 'Episode 42: Strawnana'.^[22]

Controversies

MineCon 2011

The Yogscast team had their own panel at MineCon 2011,^[3][23] where they showcased the work of the Minecraft community using multimedia presentations, displaying works such as various "redstone" creations made by the Voxel crew, a video displaying the creative Minecraft structures created by Block_Fortress, a server trailer for TheVoxelBox, and exclusively premiering an episode of Shadow of Israphel to the live audience.

After MineCon 2011 the Yogscast had a major falling out with Minecraft creator Markus 'Notch' Persson, in which Persson accused the Yogscast of profanity and unprofessional behaviour and stated he would no longer work with the Yogscast.^[24] These claims were questioned by MineCon attendees as well as John 'TotalBiscuit' Bain,^[24] a long time friend of the Yogscast. The Yogscast responded to the criticisms on Reddit and via a YouTube video, denying Persson's accusations and expressing their disappointment and frustration with the organisation of MineCon, as well as their respect for the Minecraft community and Persson in particular.^[25] Persson later apologised for the misunderstanding, retracted his accusations, and attributed the statements to stress and mis-communication.^[26]

Comment section hiatus

Yogscast member Joakim 'Rythian' Hellstrand first brought up the idea of turning off the comments section on his YouTube videos on Saturday 15 June 2013,^[27] which then inspired the Yogscast's main YouTube channel BlueXephos to consider doing so as well. Hellstrand himself did not disable comments on his videos until after they were disabled on the BlueXephos channel.^[28]

On Tuesday 18 June 2013, the Yogscast's business development manager Mark 'Turps' Turpin announced on Reddit and Twitter that the BlueXephos channel was going to experiment with turning off the ability to comment on specific videos,^[29] with the intention of improving feedback and communication.^[30]

BlueXephos first banned comments on their video 'StarMade Ep 3 – Insanium' released on 23 June 2013.^[31] Certain videos since then uploaded by BlueXephos have the comment section blocked. There was a specific routine of them doing this from "Geoguessr Challenge – Lewis vs Sjin Part 1" to "YogNews – 8 Player Xbox One, 2DS News and Skin Sale!".^[32][33]

Minecraft: The Story of Mojang

Brindley and Lane appear briefly in the documentary film – Minecraft: The Story of Mojang.^[34] The film follows Minecraft's rise to success and the formation of Mojang.

Charity initiatives

The Yogscast win at the Oxfam Awards 2012, accepting the award for Most Popular Fundraiser from JustGiving

In April 2011, QubeTubers held a telethon-style livestreaming event to raise money for Child's Play. The Yogscast appeared as guest hosts along with many other internet personalities such as CaptainSparklez (Jordan Maron), Seananners (Adam Montoya), C418 and Deadmau5.^[35]

For the 2011 holiday season, the Yogscast team raised money for Oxfam to "send locally-sourced and vaccinated goats to families living in poverty." As of May 2012, a total of £63,780 has been raised, exceeding the target goal of £60,000.^[36] The Yogscast was named JustGiving's Most Popular Fundraiser of 2012 for this achievement.^[37]

On 16 June 2012 Brindley and Lane aided OpShareCraft's livestream, raising money for Save the Children, as guests.^[38][39] Over $17,000 was raised in the few hours they were there, adding to the final total of over $1 million.^[38]

For the 2012 holiday season, the Yogscast team did another charity drive for Oxfam, to "provide training and a workshop for the manufacture of modern beekeeping equipment for Ethiopian families".^[40][41] They worked with other YouTube partners such as Hat Films and GameChap. Other YouTube celebrities, such as TotalBiscuit and Athene hosted the livestream which went on through the night everyday during December. The current total raised by "Honeydew's Honey Drive" is £210,977.^[40] They were nominated again for JustGiving's Most Popular Fundraiser of 2013 and received a Special Recognition Award at the JustGiving Awards ceremony.^[42]

Furthermore to the annual seasonal charity initiatives, starting on the 1st December 2013, the Yogscast team started yet another charity drive called ‘Dwarven Diary Drive’. This time teaming up with ‘Humble Bundle’, and gaining support from their friends in the gaming industry. This year, the Yogscast team expanded, including several charities in the charity drive. Again, with the help from their partners ‘Humble Bundle’, the donators could choose how much they wanted to contribute and of which charity they wanted to donate to, out of: Oxfam, SpecialEffect, Little People UK, GamesAid, and War Child.^[43] The Yogscast claimed that with working with Humble, they could give something back for the kind generosity, free games, better known as ‘Steam Keys’. As part of this effort, Lane was released as a downloadable character for the PC version of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed on December 6, 2013, with all proceeds going to SpecialEffect.^[44]

They have raised $1,156,799.80 ~ £700,000 at the end of their December 2013 charity drive, thanking all the gamers and fans who donated and the international video games companies who supported this cause.^[45]

Members

Note: The dates in parentheses show how long that member has been working with the Yogscast. The names in the square brackets are usernames from their current Minecraft accounts, unless otherwise noted.

Timeline

References

External links

• Official website